


uniform

by Harmonica_Smile (Rescue_Remedy)



Series: Domestic Blindness [6]
Category: One Piece
Genre: #Dellinger One Piece (Background), #Donquixote Doflamingo (Background), Baby 5 (Background), Complete, Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante (Background), Donquixote Family are background but important, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Gen, Gladius One Piece (Background), Humor, Humor in the Time of Social Distancing, It's more about wearing masks and mask fashion, Jora One Piece (Background), Luffy Ace and Zoro are minor characters, Marines are the teachers, No Angst, do not copy to another site, high school au I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23893597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rescue_Remedy/pseuds/Harmonica_Smile
Summary: All masks needed to be uniform—white cloth, white thread, white elastic. Only there wasn't any white cloth, thread or elastic to be had. Giolla was a whiz with the treadle and Law was in trouble with Principal Akainu for lowering standards and flouting the rules by flaunting Donquixote fashion. Flamingos one day, hearts the next. Insubordination would not be tolerated.no angst.
Relationships: Donquixote Pirates & Trafalgar D. Water Law
Series: Domestic Blindness [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558741
Comments: 16
Kudos: 26





	uniform

* * *

**uniform**

* * *

"mffhemmgrgg…TRA..gln…AR!"

"Sir?"

Principal Akainu swung his finger under the elastic of his mask, unhooked it from one ear and let it dangle from the other.

"You'll infect me, Sir."

The huge man rose from his desk. As if he could infect anyone from Flevance.

"One point five metres remember, perhaps even two. I wouldn't get any closer." Law leaned back in his seat, crossed his shoes at the ankle. A bit scuffed and scratched up. Game of soccer at lunch and he hadn't bothered to change into his sports gear. Mud along the cuff of his trousers.

Aikanu slammed his fists on the desk. Its oaken grain hardly rattled. But it did rattle. He had some meat on those fists. Law rubbed a knuckle against his eye. Tired.

"Only white allowed, Trafalgar." It's not as if the reprobate didn't know. The Donquixote family constantly flouted the dress code. Baby 5 running around with a mask scalloped like a doily. The Donquixote symbol imprinted all over Bellamy's. Dellinger's mask swam with fish and Gladius' exploded in colour—literally. Like the cloth was manifest with hand-fluoro-grenades and cluster bombs.

It wasn't a simple matter of the white cotton having run out.

But, huh. So it was easier to talk through cloth? Even so, they needed to be uniform or the students got competitive, and the designs got flashier and more elaborate, and before you knew it someone had thrown themselves off the top floor of the school because their mask was too plain and everyone hated them. Or a revolution. A revolution was on the cards. Neither was an ideal situation.

Sure, sure, Fujitora could wear purple-patterned tiger print—Akainu shuddered to think if it matched his underwear—but that was the kind of absurdity that would come to pass if everyone was permitted to wear any mask they wanted any old way, any old day.

Looked like the kid had punched holes in his ears too. That was an offence. And they'd have to dye that blue tint black. Had enough of a headache battling Mrs. Eustass every time they sent a note home instructing Kid to standardise the colour of his hair. She never even bothered to change out of her bunny slippers. Worse than Tsuru.

"What was it on Monday?" Akainu jammed the end of a pen in his mouth and ground down. Craved a cigar.

Law moved his head, confused. The old man was gonna ink his lips if he wasn't careful.

"The design, dipshit. On Monday?"

"Flamingos, Sir." Law had wanted to wear the bear paw print motif that day, but Doflamingo had been pensive, and pink usually cheered him up. It was a pretty nice mask, and Doffy had embroidered the black cloth himself with his favourite bird.

"Today?"

"Hearts."

How to explain that when Giolla and Cora got their heads together there was no stopping them, and they spent hours on each design. And really, there wasn't any white thread to be found. Or white material. It was a freaking pandemic out there. Didn't the teachers have better things to worry about?

It was a slippery slope. You let one thing go you let them all, and hell, a mudslide snowballed into an avalanche.

A sharp rap at the door and both Law and Akainu turned. Tsuru ushered in Portgas, Monkey and the sword boy.

"Not standard, Sir," Tsuru tapped the bottom of her own mask, not her face. Bubbles on a blue background floating to the sky. She wasn't referring to herself.

"Too close," Law exhaled, warm air trapped in cotton, as Luffy pushed ahead of Ace and breathed onto Law's neck. Ace yanked him back. Too close to Ace now, but they were family.

"Thanks, Traff!"

Law looked behind him. Portgas pointed at the fire framing the edges of his mask. Gladius had helped with that one. Red elastic. Black material. Pretty cool. Cora handstitched the straw hats that patterned Luffy's, and Zoro had sewn the three swords on his bright green creation under Giolla's guidance.

"Wipe that smirk off your face."

Law turned back to Akainu and stared him down. As if he could tell.

"There's a shortage of white cotton." Tsuru adjusted her own mask again. It slipped when she spoke. "You know that."

Akainu opened a ledger on his table. "Trafalgar's infractions pre-date the pandemic."

Law thinned his lips. Under the red hearts. Face Akainu gussied up in a Giolla-Cora-Doflamingo inspiration (Law, not Akainu), or face Giolla-Cora-Doflamingo in standard white protective gear?

He'd rather a thousand detentions or whatever that week's punishment happened to be. The last time he'd obeyed Akainu the Family made him wear one of Baby 5's designs to school.

It certainly was white and ruched and pleated and frilly. Eustass didn't let him live it down and he got detention anyway. Or extra homework. Or whatever they were doling out that day. Sitting in seiza outside the principal's office. With the damned mask on, all the students traipsing by.

Akainu thought he'd been taking the piss.

"How's your supply, Sir?" Law asked Akainu as the head hooked the elastic back over his ear, repositioned the covering on his face.

He frowned.

"Akainu?" Tsuru asked.

He opened his drawer and looked at the package. One left. Salarymen, office ladies, all the teachers, they had to wear plain white gear. It was neat and disciplined and bred no competition.

But his staff had been flouting the rules lately too.

He jabbed the pen Tsuru's way.

"Yours. That bubble thing. Where'd you get it?" It was more difficult to hear him now, but he was clearer than before. The angrier he got the more distinct he became.

"Associate," Tsuru said, staring at the window rather than Akainu.

He was going to kneecap Trafalgar if he didn't stop smirking. He didn't care how soft those hearts made him look. Had he inked his fingers? Where did he think he was? Some reformatory? He'd send him there. No good ever came out of the Donquixote household.

"Sengoku?" Sengoku's masks alternated between seagulls and goats. "Where'd he get his?"

"Same."

Fraternising with the damn enemy. But there was no white thread to be found. Or cloth.

"Tell 'em I want five, pronto." The Board of Education insisted that they be protected at all times. Saved them, saved the students.

"There's no white cloth, Sir," Law said. Baby had hoarded it all. White was available, but the styles were on the ruffled side of things.

"What's it to you?"

Law shook his head. Nothing.

"There's no white cloth," Tsuru said, "or thread."

"Black?"

Tsuru crossed the office, smart shoes tapping over the polished floor, stood side on, viewed the garden. "Garp's doing a great job on those roses."

Akainu sucked the air against his teeth. Yeah, yeah, but he preferred tea flowers himself. Delicate and the plant was useful.

Tsuru glanced Law's way. The three boys slouched against the wall behind him. He lifted a raised thumb against an itchy ear, pinched it. Tsuru thought that was a positive. "Brown?" she asked, "in case there's no black?" Law raised his thumb again and flapped it against the top ridge of his ear, like a dog shaking out a flea.

Akainu narrowed his eyes. "Pierced your ears, Trafalgar?"

A touch of panic crossed Law's face, then left, and he closed two fingers over his lobe. Baby had done it. Practicing her beautician skills with a sterilised needle and a bit of thread. Doff had finished the job with his powers so it healed quickly.

"Pink?" Tsuru asked.

Akainu turned her way. What would he do with a pink mask?

"Asking for Hina."

Law dropped a hand by his chair, arm swaying slightly, thumb down.

"Sit up Trafalgar! Portgas, wake _up_. Roronoa, jeez, stop that snoring."

The Monkey boy looked at him. Eyes eager but who knew if that shit-eating grin plastered his face.

"Monkey, get out."

Disappointment? Fuck these masks. How was he ever meant to know what the students were planning if he couldn't read their expressions. Straw hats. It'd be the end of him.

"Black is okay, Akainu. Brown too, I think. But have to check on pink."

The principal jerked back in his seat then back to that D. troublemaker. Two D troublemakers. " _Out_ ," he roared, waking Portgas and Roronoa. "You as well!. Don't you know there shouldn't be more than two people in a room at a given time?"

They didn't need encouragement and though Luffy wanted to give Law a reassuring pat on the arm his brother stopped him.

"Soon you can annoy him all you want, but it's really not a good idea to get too physical now."

"What about our classes, Sir?" Zoro asked, pausing by the doorway. "Twenty-eight folk at least in those."

"Have you got a mask?"

"Got swords on it." Zoro pointed to his face. That was another one who had to dye his hair constantly.

Akainu rolled his eyes, stood half out of his seat again and directed him out with a glare.

"Five brown, five black, STAT," he said back over his shoulder, Tsuru's way.

"Can I go, Sir?" Law asked. He gathered his bag.

"Snowed under, but they're a big operation, so I'm sure they'll get onto them as soon as they can. Particularly as it's for the frontlines," Tsuru said. "Gotta check about that pink, but they had rolls of black and brown last time I visited."

She moonlighted as a parole officer. It took her to the grimmer parts of town.

" _Pftt_." Akainu exhaled, grunted.

Tsuru looked out again at the roses, lifted her hand to indicate to Law that he should stand and accompany her from the room.

* * *

No-one mentioned it on fear of death or a lifetime of homework and club duties (or sitting seiza until your legs needed amputation) but the design that Akainu liked to wear most was the one that Tsuru must've had a hand in. A light crewel work of a sakazuki tsubaki, or a gourd camellia, was stitched along the jaw and the side of one of the brown masks.

Apart from it being a name colleagues called him (the school was its own form of hierarchical family) he admired the red flower, and the actual sakazuki cups filled to the brim with sake that he'd shared with his roughhouse brothers way back when.

They'd promised one another they'd knock some kind of learning and rigorous training into the heads and minds of the deadbeats who stumbled across their school's threshold (cos very few walked through the doors with their shoulders back and their chests wide). When he glanced at himself in the mirror in the morning the design reminded him, kept him on track. If Sengoku could wear goats he could wear the camellia with pride.

It irked him to see the Trafalgar boy, the Donquixote flunky, with submarines one day, penguins the next, and even a spooky white flower sunk into the cloth (he thought there was no white thread or material) which glowed when they hit the lights for videos. But he had to let it go. The pandemic was easing up, but wasn't gone, and for the duration, he had to ease up on the school regulations, but they weren't gone either.

Law, for his part, never let anyone know, except Doflamingo and never Cora, of the crude penes he'd stitched on a small panel placed between the two cuts of cloth that formed the masks. No-one needed any convincing that Akainu was a dickhead, so Law kept that piece of information to himself, which was mature of him, even if the design was not. He was a teenager after all.

* * *

"What are you smirking at, Trafalgar?"

Law stared at Akainu, all cat-eyed innocence.

"Sir?" The man had x-ray vision now?

Still, Law could tell his lips were twisted into a snarl behind by the mask.

"On your way."

Law adjusted the cloth, careful not to touch his face, and walked away. He'd lost a bet with Cora and he'd made him wear a pickled plum design. Dried little shrivelled up bitter fruit. Just as well the klutz hated bread as passionately as Law did, and no-one had thought to torture him yet with his nemesis.

* * *

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact. [Japan schools and workplaces have been criticised](https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200420/p2a/00m/0na/014000c) recently for not changing policies about only wearing white masks. However, there isn't any white thread to be found, and disposable masks are in short supply. It doesn't apply to all schools or workplaces. Also, yeah, I know, Japanese schools don't really have detention as a punishment. This is a hybrid AU set somewehre.
> 
> A bit of information about the [yakuza and sakazuki](https://yakuzahistory.wordpress.com/sakazuki/) cups.
> 
> A link to the [flower above](http://aquiya.skr.jp/zukan/Camellia_japonica/Camellia_japonica_Sakazukibatsubaki.html). In Japanese it's as Akainu names it. If you're in Chrome, you can get that text auto-translated, I hope.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So this was just a quick one. I just wanted to riff on the idea of Law getting into trouble because of Donquixote fashion. After all, the brighter and the blingier the better ♥ Plus, maybe a bit topical to our times, and hopefully a touch of lightness. Thanks for reading. If you liked it, your kudos and comment love is met with love. Cheers!
> 
> My [tumblr](https://chromatic-lamina.tumblr.com/).


End file.
